I fear that on both sides it is embittered men who will be released from the civilian internment camps. People do not realise how financial ruin, harassment, illness and death (to which the harassment may have contributed) follow in the track of internment. A man is interned, his wife and family are reduced to a mere pittance, the woman is, it may be, delicate. She falls ill and dies.[31] And amid such incidents and the mental strain of the confinement a brooding hatred gradually settles down upon the souls of these sufferers. Personally, I do not feel one can expect much favourable memory of the authorities on either side. Certainly every one who has worked for prisoners is touched by their gratitude, but the iron has entered into their souls for all that. And perhaps it is well to remind ourselves that a far larger number of civilians have been suffering in the internment camps on this side. Let us not add to their bitterness by unworthy abuse or credulous malice. Men who, after long confinement for no offence of their own, have tried to save enemy lives, and find their efforts described as an attempt at murder, must begin to feel hopeless of justice. Excess of generosity would be far wiser. The world wants no more missioners of hate. Let us try to avoiding creating such. In our own internment camps there was often, even early in the war, an atmosphere of depression which one worker said “haunted him for days.” The following extract is from the letter of an interned man who showed quite remarkable courage and fought with considerable success against depression till the end of 1917. “I refuse to give way to depression,” he wrote. But in 1918 the strain of useless monotony had become too great, he became physically ill, and how low hope had fallen the letter itself shows: “You can’t think how good it is to hear you speak with so much sympathy. I feel sure you understand the dreariness of this life, the long and fruitless waiting, the nights of anguish—and all the misery of it, the terrible discontent and the passionate heart longings.... You don’t know how sore it is sometimes about my heart....” Methods that seem to many of us avoidable contribute also to increase ill-feeling. I take the following from the _Daily News_ of September, 27, 1918: Among others, I had my Christmas dinner last year with a German. At least, his name is German and he was born in Germany. He is less interested, personally, in those facts than in these, viz., that he is an international Socialist and a first class electrical engineer. For four years he has done extremely responsible work for a large engineering firm with important contracts from the M. of M. For four years he has had his liberty within the usual five-mile radius; for four years the local police have not found the least fault with him.